A Boston Daily Globe (US) reporter, accompanied by Mr B, a City of London police officer, made a walking tour of some of the murder sites - Mitre Square, Berner Street, Buck`s Row, Hanbury Street - and his report was published in Boston Daily Globe on 10 December 1888: After the
dreadful crimes so placidly
perpetrated in Mitre Square and Berner
street, I conceived an ardent desire to visit and see for myself the
region... I mentioned [this] to a friend of mine, Inspector R of
the City Police... "Where do you want to go?", he asked. "Well", I
replied, "I want to go to Mitre- square, Buck`s-row, Berners-street, and
Hanbury-street...". "I can manage that for you", he said. "One of our
men, Mr B, is a thoroughly efficient and highly respectable and
intelligent officer, and he can go round with you". I thanked the worthy
inspector who introduced me to Mr B... and arrangement was made...
that I should meet the officer on the next night by the Law Courts. The next evening, we met at the appointed place... We hailed a `bus and
soon we left the glare and bustle of the Strand and Fleet Street far
behind. At Leaderhall-street, we got down and just at the end of that
street and Whitechapel-road is a narrow street, which leads into
Mitre-square. At night, it is comparatively deserted, and, moreover, is
badly lit, the corners being completely enveloped in gloom and another
thing is that there are few thorough -fares leading in or out of the
square. The next place we visited was Berners-street.. to get there we had to
cross Whitechapel-road and go down Commercial-street.. In another few minutes
we were in what my companion tersely described as a beastly
locality. A long, ill-paved, narrow badly-lit street. The lamps are few
and far between and show a flickering, sickly yellow light.. the darkness seems trebly bad... houses
are small and squalid... We cross
over. Mr B points out a door apparent -ly leading into a house but, when
he pushes it open, I see, to my astonishment, that it encloses a court or
narrow alley. I peep down it and as well as I can see in the blackness -
for there is no lamp in the entry - I notice that there are houses at
each side. Filthy, ramshackle cottages, evidently let out in
tenements... "You see", says Mr B, "there
are any amount of these
alleys
about and while the police are patrolling the streets, Lord only knows
what goes on in the courts that branch from the main thoroughfare. For
instance, we passed a couple of constables a few minutes ago; well
they
are not able to visit, and properly inspect, every alley in
Berners-street. Why, we should want at least a score of men for that
duty alone. Look how dark the entries are. If a murder were committed in
the street, the murderer could easily escape observation by staying in
one of the alleys till the hue and cry was over, and then, he could mix
with the crowd and get off." By this time, we have got to a
building,
which Mr B informs me, is the club rendered notorious by being so near
the scene of the Berner Street Tragedy, whilst opposite is a stone
block
which is a board school. Next to the club is a pair of high wooden gates, which open inwards into the stable yard. On the right is the
club, the windows of which are all lit up, and further on, is the side
door. Opposite are three small, whitewashed cottages. The place is so
narrow
that if the hapless victim had made the least noise it must have been
heard, despite the sing -ing and merriment that were going on in the club. A
girl of about 14 barefooted and bareheaded with white frightened
face and sharp furtive eyes, comes out of one of the houses... "the
woman was found there", she says, with infinite gusto smacking her lips
at the chance of repeating the tale of horror to an interesting
listener, "`er head was on that short stone post, and `er legs was just
over the iron railings, and blood and gore was all down there", and pointed out the various spots mentioned with great relish. "Do you live
here?" we asked. "Yes sir, in the second cottage", she answered. "And
did you not hear anything?", queried Mr B. "Not a sound, sir", says the
girl "nobody else down here heard nothing neither. You
know, sir, I think..." But we were fated never to hear what the
girl thinks, for a voice calls out "Lizer!" and she promptly vanished
into the cottage... We
reach Buck`s Row, and I may, at once, admit that I was agreebly surprised
by it. The street is fairly wide, well paved, and not
badly lit. The
houses are small, but the majority are clean and respectable looking,
and seem to be inhabited by the hard working poor. In fact, it is a very
superior locality to Berner-street. The actual spot of the tragedy,
although rather in the shade, is still open. There is a house with green
shutters. Next to it is a pair of wood -en gates; slantingly opposite is
another lamp. Between the lamp by the gate, lying in the road itself,
was found the barbarously mutilated body of the second victim of the
recent murders. To my mind, this is the most mysterious crime of the
lot,
for it seems improbable that so ghastly as act could be perpetrated in a
comparatively well-lit, thickly populated street like this, without
some trace of the assassin being found or some clue to his whereabouts being discovered. A door is open of one of the houses, and it gives us
an opportunity of seeing an interior, so scrupulously clean, so bright
and cheerful, that the remembrance of the black deed that took place
outside to be even yet more horrible. We have seen all there is to see.
We leave Buck`s-row, on our way to Hanbury-street... Hanbury
Street is a very different locality to any we have been in. It is
long and narrow and unevenly paved. The houses are rather high, the
majority dirty and the whole lot swarming with inhabitants... We are
now near the scene of the murder; there are few shops, but any number of
these common lodging- houses... On our left is a house with the legend "Comfortable beds" written on a board outside. Opposite is the
lodging-house from which the hapless victim of the Hanbury-street
tragedy was turned away to meet her death, because she had not the four
pence for her bed... I look stealthily at my watch and I find
that it is getting late, so we proceed to direct our footsteps toward
Whitechapel-road, which is the first stage of my return journey
homewards... We are now in Commercial-street and seems to me a
very paradise after the slums we have left... mist has cleared away, if it were not for the all-pervading and abominable smell of fried fish, the air would be delightfully fresh in comparison with Hanbury-street. Whitechapel-road itself, is a great delight to me - it is wide and noisy
and presents all the appearance of a fair. Either side of the road is a
long row of stalls, brilliantly lit up with portable gas... Men lounge
about here, but they give me the idea of idling after work is done, for
they have very little of the raffish look of their Berners and
Hanbury-street compeers. In short, the East End cannot be judged from
the flourishing and busy Whitechapel-road. It is the places that branch off from it that are so vile. It is the places where the moral sewage
flows till they become hideous cesspools of vice and crime. Fine ladies,
and white-handed gentlemen, will do no good down here; indeed nothing
will remedy the evils while lighting is deficient, sanitary
conveniences
absent, and these filthy dark alleys exist. I saygoodbye to Mr B at
the Aldgate station and thank him, as well as I may for his courtesy
and kindness and for his presence, which has kept me from insult and
robbery in what he describes as "one of the (if not the) worst
localities in London". As I return to my hotel, I think with a thrill
of
disgust of the many things I have seen and heard during my night`s
slumming in Whitechapel.

OCTOBER 1890

A Pall Mall Budget
reporter made a walking tour - visiting the murder sites in George Yard, Buck`s Row,
Mitre Square, Berner Street and Hanbury Street, went to Dorset Street [off which was the murder site in Miller`s Court], and the murder sites in Castle
Alley, and Pinchin Street. His report, "Murderland Revisited: A Tour of
Jack the Ripper`s Haunts in Whitechapel", was published in Pall Mall Budget on 9 October 1890: I went first to the scene of the very first murder - the landing of the
common lodging-house in George-yard, where Martha Tabram`s dead body,
shocking -ly mutilated, was found on the morning after a Bank Holiday. It
is true that on recommendation of the coroner`s jury who investigated
the circumstances of her death, a lamp was fixed there, and, it is true
also that, it exists at the present time. But then, lamps can`t be alight
all night in common lodging- houses - so the landlords say - and, if
what some of the tenants say be true, after 11 or 12 o`clock at
night the lamp is turned out and, in every essential respect, the
landing
assumes the appearance it bore when Martha Tabram was done to death
there... Policemen seldom, if ever, visit that landing now: it is no
part of their beat, the only contingency to be faced by any would-be
murderer who should take his victim there after midnight tomorrow
would
be the arrival of one of the occupants of the upstairs tenements... and,
even that contingency, is a very improbable one, for the occupants are
nearly all of them unskilled labourers, the exigencies of whose work
leave them no opportunity for midnight dissipations. Then, take next, that blank wall in Buck's-row where the next victim was
butchered. Nothing whatever, in the way of change of any kind, has taken
place there. The wall is just as blank, the light at night is just as
indistinct, the Row at midnight is just as denuded of civilians and
policemen, as when the un- fortunate woman Hyde [sic Mary Ann Nichols] was stabbed and mutilated
there. It was rare even before the murder, to find any pedestrians in
Buck's-row after midnight; it always had a bad name for robberies and
assaults; it was given up, by general consent, to the cluster of
houseless unfortunates, who were in the habit of sleeping there. After
the tragedy, even unfortunates fled from it, its pavements only
resounded at night to the measured tread of the temporary police patrol.
But now, unfortunates have forgotten the fate of their "pal", the
police patrol has been withdrawn and passers-by at night are rarer than
ever. It might perhaps be a slight exaggeration to say that the
murderer of Annie Hyde [sic Mary Ann Nichols] would find it just
as easy to repeat his hellish
work tomorrow night, for a police "point" has been established a little
nearer Buck's-row than formerly; but, at all events, can be safely said
that the operation would be attended with but the merest fraction
of increased difficulty. A curious illustration, or rather proof, of
this statement occurred in the course of my investigation. About 1
o'clock on one morning, I happened to be near Buck's-row, when my
attention was attracted by violent screaming, evidently from
that locality. I proceeded there and found, lying on the pavement within
twenty yards of the scene of the murder, a woman, evidently pretty far
gone in drink. She was bleeding from a wound in the temple, sustained
perhaps in her fall to the ground, and had taken an hysterical fit
of screaming. It was actually between four and five minutes before a
policeman arrived on the scene to know "what all the row was about". He
tried on finding her condit -ion to "move her on", but the woman
violently resisted and even attacked him. Assistance was evidently
necessary then to take her to the police station, and the writer, with
hearty goodwill, set about blowing a police-whistle, which he had with
him. Yet, with all that hullabaloo, another three minutes were required for a second policeman to put in an appearance. It was only a drunken
woman, you say? True. But, it might have been a victim screaming in her last agonies and eight minutes to get two policemen together on the
very scene of a former murder is a big start to give the quick
heeled
Ripper. It would make all the difference between his capture and his
getting safely off with another murder added to his long record. Mitre-square - the scene of probably the worst butchery of all - is,
undoubtedly, better patrolled than it used to be; beats have been
shortened, the police- man's bullseye flashes its light all round the
square too frequently to allow of deliberate and cold-blooded
butchery as occurred there before. But then the Metropolitan police
force can take no credit for that. credit, if any, belongs to the
very much better organized and much more adequate City police. The
self-same Sunday morn that heralded discovery of the Mitre-square
victim was the one that found another unfortunate lying in the
gateway
in Berner- street, St. George's East with her throat cut. It is true,
since that time, the gateway has been religiously closed after the
last van has entered it. But the vans are sometimes very late in
arriving, and what is there to prevent a murderer decoying another
victim there? When you push open the gate, it is as dark as Erebus; when
the gate is pushed back, there is an effectual screen from any prying
passer-by, although passers-by, who are constituted very largely of the
foreigners who reside in the locality, are far too scared to ever peep
inside that gate with its terrible history; and, finally, there is
always sing -ing or some other form of entertainment going on at the
International Club next door, to effectually drown a faint shriek. But,
what about the policeman on the beat, you say? The police, on that beat,
have got so tired of opening that gate, and finding nothing there since
the murder, that they have, long ago, despaired of ever finding
anything,
and, consequently, pass it now with the most complete indifference. And,
even should, by the most remote possibility, the murderer be disturbed by anybody opening the gate from the street entrance, he is by no means
caught in a trap, for there are plenty of backyards that can be scaled and a great many courts and passages leading to Berner and other
streets to be easily reached. On the whole, then, that gateway in Berner-street would form a very safe place for any operations of the
Ripper just now. Next, there is that mysterious house in
Hanbury-street... evidence, given at the inquest on the
disembowelled body found in its backyard, revealed the fact that
unfortunates, somehow or another, seemed to possess a right of way
through the passage, and so into the yard. One would have thought that,
after such a revelation as that, some steps would at least have been
taken to put a stop to such a scandal. But, no. After midnight, there is
nothing what -ever to prevent anybody from lifting the latch of the
door
and proceeding by way of the passage, to the very spot where the
Ripper,
in a paroxysm of fury, plucked out the entrails of another victim... The premises are nothing more than a "doss house" on a
small scale; its residents change nearly every day, nobody would
presume to question the right of any one to pass through the passage, and
so into the fateful yard, where, as before, a murder could be committed
now with comparative impunity. And yet, what an outburst of popular
indignation there would be, if another butchery occurred on the
self-same spot that reeked before with the blood of a murdered woman! What is
true of the house in Hanbury-street is true also, in lesser
degree, perhaps, of the lodging-house in the court off Dorset-street
where discovery of another mutilated victim cast a gloom on the Lord
Mayor's festivities of two years ago. It was the boldest stroke of
all,
when the Whitechapel fiend decoy -ed his victim there. And what boldness,
or rather absolute wantonness, accomplished before, it can doubtless
accomplish again. There is some prospect, at last, of the vile hole known as Castle-alley, where the last murder occurred, being swept off the face of the earth, for the White -chapel Board of Works have lately decided to convert it
into a public thoroughfare. But the archway in Pinchin-street remains in
precisely the same condition in which it appeared when the sackful of
human remains was found beneath it. That archway, it may be remembered,
forms but one of several, some of which are partially boarded up from
the street and which form at the present time, an acknowledged resort
of unfortunates, who ply, almost undisturbed, their degraded trade
there. Even the miserable little shed, with worm-eaten boards and
utter
lack of any conveniences for post-mortem or other examinations, despite the
lashings of humanitarian and sanitarian writers which the local
authorities were at one time compelled to undergo remains just the same
now as when the juries were ushered into the ''mortuary" as it is
called with the grimmest of humour, to examine the dead bodies of the
victims deposited there. Or rather, to speak the literal truth, the shed
is more mouldy, more foul-smelling, more worm-eaten and more useless
for its purpose than ever. It is, but fair to say, however, that the
Board of Works have got so far as the plans and the site of a new
mortuary - and not, assuredly, before it was needed. But, are the
conditions precisely the same for the perpetration of
murders as was the case two years ago - are intended victims to be
decoyed as easily as then?", some sceptical reader may ask. The personal
investigations of the writer have convinced him that, should the
Whitechapel Terror appear in our midst again, on the same murderous
mission, he would find the conditions precisely the same as before, his
victims just as easily decoyed, and just as numerous. The
unfortunate class in Whitechapel and St. George's, or rather the lower
unfortunate class from whom the victims were chiefly recruited - for there are distinctions even in degradation - is just as numerous as ever
it was. They form the very dregs of humanity. Better conditions of
trade, and better conditions of labour, affect their numbers not at all.
They drift down through a life of shame, until they become veritable
pariahs, even among the unfortun- ates in other parts of London; until the
streets of Whitechapel become their only home and immorality, in its
very worst form, their only resource. The very worst of disorderly
houses will seldom open their doors to them, and the practising of their
vile trade, in the courts and alleys and archways of the district, constitutes their only resource against absolute starvation. Prowling
through this district for the greater part of nearly every night, and
sleeping for the rest of the night in one or other of these plague
spots, they have the locality of each at their fingers' ends and long
experience has made them equally well ac- quainted with the exact time at
which the policeman on beat passes each of these places. What need of
decoying these creatures? The very exigencies of their degraded calling
make them accessories to their own murder. God help them when they get
in a would-be murderer's hands.

FEBRUARY 1891

Journalist Kit Watkins made a walking tour of
the murder sites of Buck`s Row, Hanbury Street, and Miller`s Court. Her
report was published in the Toronto Mail (Canada) on 27 Feb 1891: it was
getting late and we wanted
to go down Whitechapel way, so we took a bus and soon were jolting
down
the main road. The change in the streets and people was wonderful.
Here, as we walked
up through the courts and slums made so infamously famous by that
wretched murderer of wretched women, one could see, on every side,
depraved, vicious faces, the skulking walk, the suspicious eyes and
retreating forehead and chin that betoken, if not crime, at least fatal
weakness. We passed through Buck's Row where one unfortunate was
done
to death, and went up Hanbury Street; a foul, stinking neighbourhood
where the child- ren are stunted little creatures with vicious faces
and.. the women's faces would frighten one far more than
would the worst specimen of man I have ever seen. Here you go through a
cat's meat shop, and come into a narrow yard, in one corner of which
another wretched victim was found murdered. But the most fearful
of all
these fearful places is Dorset Street, Spitalfields, where in a dismal
court, the entrance to which is so narrow that but one can pass at a
time, the woman Kelly was so terribly butchered some years ago... A
woman, who is a called "Lottie", lives in the
room where the crime was committed, a dark narrow room opening on the
court with no communication with the upstairs part of the tenement
house. "I was her friend", said Lottie, speaking with difficulty, because
of a broken and battered nose given her by a kick from her husband's
heavy boot, "two nights before the murder, she came to my room. I
was
living farther up the court then, and 'Lottie', says she, 'I'm afraid
to be alone tonight, because of a dream I had that a man was murdering
me. Maybe I'd be the next.' She said it with such a laugh, ma'am, that
it just made me creep - 'they say Jack's busy again down this quarter' and, sure enough, ma'am, she was the next. I heard her through the
night,
singing - she had a nice voice - 'The violets that grow on mother's
grave' - but that was all we 'eard." The woman seemed to have no
repugnance to sleeping in the room, although black stains on the walls
and the mark of a man's head near the
window were gruesome sights. She began a graphic description of the
murdered woman's appearance, but we stopped her. Other women began to
gather presently, and grew voluble, and seemed to gloat over the
hideous details like birds of prey. They had hard, hard faces with an
evil look on them - the demands for money for beer, the curses, profane
language, jokes about the awful fiend who had done his deadly work
there; the miserable shrewd faced children listening eagerly - it was
all horrible beyond expression. There was a sort of apathetic matter of
fact wickedness about the women that had a fearful aspect. There was no
flaunting, no sign of feeling, because so many of their number had met
with dreadful deaths. There was only a dull, everyday sort of
expression
of immorality on their faces and in their manners, as though such
things as vice and murder were common matters and to be expected at
any
time, that was inexpressibly shocking. The only sign of feeling shown
was when the beer appeared and they all clustered greedily round to
drink it. Gladly, we made our way from that wretched court and
went
up
the street, past the crowded gin shop at the corner... filled
with "gay" women and vicious men, and awful child faces. We watched a
woman, with a baby in her arms, take off its miserable under-skirt,
leaving it in a thin cotton wrapper, poor shoes and ragged socks,
and cross hurriedly to the pawn-brokers opposite. "Maybe she is hungry",
said my friend, as she fumbled in her cloak pocket for stray pennies,
"let us wait a minute." She came out, the wretched, shivering baby
crying with cold and want, and, with the few halfpence she got for the
child's things, went into the public house and called for drink. It
was a dreadful, dreadful sight, and will give a feeble picture of the
misery and want caused by the demon drink. Further up, we saw a comical
little boy, a dirty ragged little "Sheeny", standing gravely before a
big looking glass which had just been unpacked
and was outside a second hand dealer's shop, washing his
face by spitting on a filthy handkerchief... rubbing the same all over his cheeks and nose and eyes. "Oh, such a dirty little boy as never yet
was seen." Sure enough, he was, and a comical imp too, for when he had finished "cleaning himself", he began to dance slowly, a sort of
Spitalfields can-can, `til one very high kick sent him flying backwards
into a gutter. An old woman sat on a doorstep opposite Spitalfields
Church, and never shall we forget her face. You could trace her whole
history in it. She had been pretty once and then, no doubt, there was
the
gay life on the Strand, and about the clubs - at the Argyll Rooms,
perhaps, when that place was flourishing - the theatre suppers and
champagne; the gradual descent to Leicester Square, and tripe suppers
with hot gin and water; then citywards and eastwards to Liverpool Street
and finally here she is, old, ugly repulsive; her features
coarsened by drink and debauchery with an awful despair on them; the
mouth, thin lipped and drawn; the eyes sunken and bleared without
eyelashes; the cunning, vicious soul looking out
greedily, suspiciously, at every one; the hungry, bird of prey, peaked
nose that once had been a beautiful aquiline; the despairing droop of
the shrunken figure, the entreaty for money to "buy a dram" as we passed; the envious clutching and feeling of one's dress. "You're rich
ladies. I was once like you, Help a poor old body, do 'ee now." It was
the picture of the end of a shameless and degraded woman with through
it all, the mark of purity that should have been hers, the mark of
her sex for all she seem- ed a sexless thing; something that told us she
had been a mother; the mark of womanhood, degraded indeed and fallen,
but still womanhood, made a sight one shall not soon forget. But let
us
leave these dreadful places forever and turn to the healthy,
bright, busy streets again, and try to shake off the feeling of horror
and dismay that oppresses one. We go on and on, till here we are in
pleasant Cheapside again...

19 APRIL 1905

Samuel Inglesby Oddie, Deputy Coroner of West London, and a few friends, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, accompanied bythree City detectives, made a walking tour of the murder sites. Oddie wrote of the walking tour in his book, Inquest, published byHutchinson & Co in 1941: Dr Gordon Brown, the City of London Police Surgeon,
was a friend of mine and it was from him that I obtained these gruesome
details [of the murders]. He was good enough to offer to show me the
scenes of these horrible murders and very kindly allowed me to bring
some friends. So on 19th April 1905 we all met at the Police Hospital,
Bishopsgate. The party consisted of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Professor
Chorton Collins, H B Irving, Dr Cross, myself, and three City
detectives, who knew all the facts about the murders. We were shown the
actual places where each crime was committed...